A study by the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that for kids with ADHD a 20 minute walk in the park improved concentration with effect sizes (the relationship between two variables) comparable to Ritalin. The walk in the park beat out a downtown walk, and a neighborhood walk. Children also rated the park walk as significantly more fun than the other walks. Here is the abstract http://jad.sagepub.com/content/early/2008/08/25/1087054708323000.abstract.
One basis for this study is Attention Restoration Theory which was developed in environmental psychology to explain why people report feeling restored after spending time in wilderness. The theory maintains that natural environments are restorative in part because they are “gently absorbing” or hold effortless “soft-fascination”.
The researchers in the walk in the park study explain that:
…ART, which is based on work by William James, posits that attention draws on two different mechanisms: one for deliberately directed, effortful forms of attention, and another for involuntary, effortless forms of attention. The notion of two mechanisms underlying attention may partially explain why individuals with ADHD can routinely sustain focus on tasks they find interesting (i.e., tasks drawing primarily on involuntary attention) but are unable to do so for tasks they find uninteresting (i.e., tasks drawing primarily on effortful, directed attention).
In other words, ADHD is probably a result of the things you are required to do being freaking BORING… like HOMEWORK! Duh. Unfortunately rather than the blatantly obvious critique of compulsory education that I read between the lines, the authors of this study conclude that hopefully in the future nature may be used in “doses” to help us do better on homework.
In earlier work on the subject of directed attention, researcher Steven Kaplan implies there may have been historical benefit to the less directed style of attention:
It might seem peculiar that a mechanism so intimately involved with human effectiveness would be so susceptible to fatigue. Yet, in evolutionary perspective, this apparent limitation might have been quite reasonable. To be able to pay attention by choice to one particular thing for a long period of time would make one vulnerable to surprises. Being vigilant, being alert, in one’s surroundings may have been far more important than the capacity for long and intense concentration. Further, much of what was important to evolving human-wild animals, danger, caves, blood, to name a few examples-was (and still is) innately fascinating and thus does not require directed attention. It is only in the modern world that the split between the important and the interesting has become extreme. All too often the modern human must exert effort to do the important while resisting distraction from the interesting (emphasis mine). Thus the problem of fatigue of directed attention may well be of comparatively recent vintage.
If I may paraphrase, I agree with Kaplan that modern life is rather sucky. Yet, if anything many tasks of paleolithic living such as hide tanning, acorn grinding, and basketry, are incredibly slow and tedious, and would seem to require directed attention. Are they the equivalent of primitive homework? And if so, is that ability to concentrate restored by practicing more scout-like skills which require a more the ADHD style of attention!? And doesn’t “gentle absorption” or “soft-facsination” sounds a lot like being in wide-angle vision!?
I think today’s society is too quick to diagnose kids with having “ADD” or “ADHD” and that people expect Ritalin to be a cure all to any person that can’t focus. Most kids are full of energy and would rather be active than focus on boring stuff like homework. In college I tutored a second grader at the Salvation Army. We’d study for like an hour and a half twice a week, and he’d start off well, but 20 minutes in he’d get bored and just start randomly guessing at his spelling words instead of trying to sound them out. That’s when I’d make him sprint up and down the stairs until he was out of breath. We might have to do that a few times a session, but he focused better. Also, we’d read a few Shel Silverstein poems, so there was something entertaining. He liked cars, and every so often, after we reached a goal of like reading 10 poems or so, I’d a buy a snap together car model and make him read the directions while assembling the car so he could see the practicality of knowing how to read. It was pretty fun.
We could all use a walk in the park or the forest. I sit in an office in front of a computer all day and can’t wait to get back outdoors and immerse myself in nature.
Maybe we should release mountain lions and other predators into office buildings to help people break the nasty habit of concentrating on work. If you think that something hungry with sharp teeth is just a few cubicles over, you might not find concentrating on the cover page for your TPS report so important.
Seriously though, there’s got to be a better way to educate our children than forcing them to sit all day in school.
Dr. Thomas Szasz Exposes Psychiatry
There is something in the office with sharp teeth, and it’s called “The Boss” , though more and more it is also “the person who wants your job.” It really is true, however, that when a family gets screwed up, everyone gets dosed with something rather than working it out. Worse, it usually means for kids that something is wrong with THEM as opposed to their parents. Mass education and home schooling are the opposites and in my opinion both inefficient and wrong. Our neighborhoods should participate in creating smaller schools, creating more jobs for teachers, and able to give more attention to individuals. Large, overcrowded public schools are failing. Massive teacher layoffs will teach kids that it isn’t a good career choice, and home schooling does not prepare children for the real world where they need to at least get along with and understand many different types of people. We just keep creating expensive bureaucracies hiding incompetence behind legalese. If we must have an economy in which both parents MUST work, then our school systems have take up the slack in overseeing and educating the children. It isn’t working. I met teachers who will have to move to work, and spent years paying for project materials out of their own pockets because of cutbacks. The social workers can’t keep up, and thousands of children fall through the cracks, “medicated” and uneducated.
More likely ADHD is simply a symptom of chronic exposure to the unnatural man-made environment. The human creature has evolved to be ideally suited to a natural environment, free of the distortions imposed by modern civilization. It should be expected that we would develop illnesses when forced to live in an artificial environment. The park, while still artificial, is more harmonious with our basic needs than the streets and skyscrapers. Theories of attention have nothing to do with it.
Toby i think you did a good thing with that boy , 1on 1. Im a product of the
the southern public school system . Even the rural schools have the problems
you all have with your children ! It could be the streets , it could be the home , it could be the skyscrappers , it could be the electric lines giving off who nows what . Down here we are blessed with A wonderful forest with almost jungle like consistance it stretches for mles and miles.. And the kids play outside everyday But we still have ADD , ADHD , . When you say your children need a rewilding to the land to heal some illness it sounds good yall . But most of these kids down here are so damn poor hunting and fishing and just gathering dandilion greens in the spring ,just gathering all summer to the fall , they are in the forest and we still have the same problems you all have . This place is like a third world country down here. Smaller schools yea …..would that really work miss TS ELLIOT! Most of the people here don’t work in a office in front of a computer we still have grown ups with ADD, ADHD .. hell half the people here can’t read much less write there name . We don’t need smaller schools we need a mirracle…………………………..